Filming took place in Munich in 1970, and the film was released by Paramount Pictures on June 30, 1971. With a budget of just $3,000,000, the film received positive reviews and performed well in 1971, but it was not a huge box-office success, only earning about $1,000,000 more than its budget at the end of its original run. It then made an additional $21 million during its 1996 re-release.[citation needed]

Until 1977, Paramount distributed the film. From then on, all the rights to the film were handed over to Warner Bros. for home entertainment purposes starting in the 1980s. The film had become a big success in that medium ever since.

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In an unnamed European town, children go to a candy shop after school. Charlie Bucket, whose family is poor, can only stare through the window as the shop owner sings "Candy Man". The newsagent for whom Charlie works after school gives him his weekly pay, which Charlie uses to buy a loaf of bread. On his way home he passes Willy Wonka's chocolate factory. A mysterious tinker recites the first lines of William Allingham's poem "The Fairies", and tells Charlie, "Nobody ever goes in, and nobody ever comes out." Charlie rushes home to his widowed mother and his four bedridden grandparents. After he tells Grandpa Joe about the tinker, Joe tells him that Wonka locked the factory because his arch rival, Mr. Slugworth, and other candy makers sent in spies disguised as employees to steal Wonka's recipes. Wonka disappeared, but three years later began selling more candy; the origin of Wonka's labour force is a mystery.

Wonka announces to the world that he has hidden five "Golden Tickets" in his chocolate Wonka Bars. The finders of these tickets will be given a tour of his factory and a lifetime supply of chocolate. Four of the tickets are found by Augustus Gloop, a gluttonous German boy; Veruca Salt, a spoiled British girl; Violet Beauregarde, a gum-chewing American girl; and Mike Teevee, a television-obsessed American boy. As each child is heralded to the world on TV, a sinister-looking man whispers to them.

Charlie finds money in a gutter and uses it to buy a Wonka Bar. He has change left that he uses to buy another Wonka bar that he intends to bring to his family. When Charlie opens the Wonka bar, he finds the final golden ticket. Racing home, he is confronted by the sinister man seen whispering to the other winners. The man introduces himself as Slugworth and offers to pay Charlie for a sample of Wonka's latest creation, the Everlasting Gobstopper.

Charlie returns home with his news. Grandpa Joe is so elated that he finds he can walk, and Charlie chooses him as his chaperone. The next day, Wonka greets the ticket winners at the factory gates. Each is required to sign an extensive contract. The factory is a psychedelic wonderland that includes a river of chocolate, edible mushrooms, lickable wallpaper, and other marvellous inventions. Wonka's workers are small, orange-skinned, green-haired Oompa-Loompas.

During the tour Augustus falls into the Chocolate River and is sucked up a pipe to the Chocolate Smelting Room. Violet blows up into a blueberry after chewing an experimental three-course meal gum. The group reaches the Fizzy Lifting Drinks Room, where Charlie and Grandpa Joe disregard Wonka and sample the beverages, though they are not caught. Veruca demands a goose that lays golden chocolate eggs, which leads her to falling down a garbage chute leading to the furnace. Mike then meets his demise with "Wonkavision", which teleports Mike but leaves him only six inches tall.

In between Augustus' and Violet's demises, Wonka gave the remaining ticket winners an Everlasting Gobstopper on the condition that they never talk about or show them to anyone. At the end of the tour, Wonka, Charlie and Grandpa Joe remain, but Wonka dismisses them. Grandpa Joe follows Wonka to ask about Charlie's lifetime supply of chocolate, to which Wonka tells him that because they violated the contract by stealing Fizzy Lifting Drinks, they receive nothing. Grandpa Joe denounces Wonka and suggests to Charlie that he give Slugworth the Gobstopper, but Charlie instead returns the candy to Wonka and apologizes.

Wonka reveals that "Slugworth" is actually an employee named Mr. Wilkinson, and the offer to buy the Gobstopper was a test; Charlie was the only one who passed. The trio enter the "Wonkavator", a multidirectional glass elevator that flies out of the factory. Soaring over the city, Wonka tells Charlie that his actual prize is the factory itself; Wonka created the contest to find a child honest and worthy enough to be his heir. Charlie and his family will live in the factory immediately and take over its operation when Wonka retires.

The idea for adapting the book into a film came about when director Mel Stuart's 10-year-old daughter read the book and asked her father to make a film out of it, with "Uncle Dave" (producer David L. Wolper) producing it. Stuart showed the book to Wolper, who happened to be in the midst of talks with the Quaker Oats Company regarding a vehicle to introduce a new candy bar from their Chicago-based Breaker Confections subsidiary (since renamed the Willy Wonka Candy Company and sold to Nestlé). Wolper persuaded the company, who had no previous experience in the film industry, to buy the rights to the book and finance the picture for the purpose of promoting a new Quaker Oats Wonka Bar.[3]

Sammy Davis, Jr. wanted to play Bill, the candy store owner, but Mel Stuart did not like the idea because he felt that the presence of a big star in the candy store scene would break the reality.[4]Anthony Newley also wanted to play Bill but Stuart also objected to this.[10]

Filming commenced on April 30, 1970, and ended on November 19, 1970. The primary shooting location was Munich, Bavaria, West Germany, because it was significantly cheaper than filming in the U.S. and the setting was conducive to Wonka's factory; Stuart also liked the ambiguity and unfamiliarity of the location. External shots of the factory were filmed at the gasworks of Stadtwerke München (Emmy-Noether-Straße 10); the entrance and side buildings still exist. The closing sequence when the Wonkavator is flying above the factory is footage of Nördlingen in Bavaria.

Production designer Harper Goff centered the factory on the massive Chocolate Room. According to Paris Themmen, who played Mike Teevee, "The river was made of water with food coloring. At one point, they poured some cocoa powder into it to try to thicken it but it didn't really work. When asked this question, Michael Böllner, who played Augustus Gloop, answers, 'It vas dirty, stinking vater.'"[11]

When interviewed for the 30th anniversary special edition, Gene Wilder stated that he enjoyed working with most of the child actors, but said that he and the crew had some problems with Paris Themmen, claiming that he was "a handful".[12]

Willy Wonka was released on June 30, 1971. The film was not a big success, being the fifty-third highest grossing film of the year in the U.S., earning just over $2.1 million on its opening weekend,[13] although it received positive reviews from critics such as Roger Ebert.[14]

Seeing no significant financial advantage, Paramount decided against renewing its distribution deal for the film when it expired in 1977. Later that year, Warner Communications, the then-parent company of Warner Bros., acquired Wolper Productions, which led to Quaker Oats selling its share of the film's rights to Warner Bros. for $500,000 at the same time.

By the mid-1980s, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory had experienced a spike in popularity thanks in large part to repeated television broadcasts and home video sales. Following a 25th anniversary theatrical re-release in 1996, it was released on DVD the next year, allowing it to reach a new generation of viewers. The film was released as a remastered special edition on DVD and VHS in 2001 to commemorate the film's 30th anniversary. In 2003, Entertainment Weekly ranked it 25th in the "Top 50 Cult Movies" of all time.

The film currently holds an 89% 'Fresh' rating on Rotten Tomatoes with the critical consensus stating "Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory is strange yet comforting, full of narrative detours that don't always work but express the film's uniqueness".[15]

Roald Dahl disowned the film, the script of which was partially rewritten by David Seltzer after Dahl failed to meet deadlines. Dahl said he was "disappointed" because "he thought it placed too much emphasis on Willy Wonka and not enough on Charlie," as well as the non-casting of Spike Milligan.[22] He was also "infuriated" by the deviations in the plot Seltzer devised in his draft of the screenplay, including the conversion of Slugworth into a spy and the "fizzy lifting drinks" scene.[22]

The film was first released on DVD in 1997 as the "25th anniversary edition"[23] as a double sided disc containing a widescreen and "standard" version. The "standard" version is an open matte print, where the mattes used to make the image widescreen are removed, revealing information originally intended to be hidden from viewers.[24]VHS copies were also available, but only containing the "standard" version.

A special edition DVD was released in 2001, celebrating the film's 30th anniversary, although only full-screen, on August 28, 2001. Due to the lack of a letterboxed release, fan petitioning eventually led Warner Home Video to issue a widescreen version on November 13, 2001. It was also released on VHS, with only one of the special features (a making-of feature). Several original cast members reunited to film documentary footage for this special edition DVD release. The two editions featured restored sound, and better picture quality. In addition to the documentary, the DVD included a trailer, a gallery, and audio commentary by the cast.

In 2006, Warner Home Video released the film on HD DVD with all the bonus features from the 2001 DVD.[25] The film was released on Blu-ray on October 20, 2009.[26] It includes all the bonus features from the 2001 DVD and 2006 HD-DVD as well as a 38-page book.

In 2011, a new 40th-anniversary Blu-ray/DVD set was released on November 1, consisting of the film on Blu-ray Disc and DVD as well as a bonus features disc. The set also included a variety of rarities such as a Wonka Bar-designed tin, four scented pencils, a scented eraser, a book detailing the making of the film, original production papers and a Golden Ticket to win a trip to Los Angeles.[27]